Gwyneth Paltrow Reflects on Her Postpartum Depression Experience
Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't think mothers dealing with postpartum depression should feel any shame.
ET chatted with the Oscar winner at the La Mer Celebrates 50 Years of an Icon event in Los Angeles on Tuesday, where she reflected on her experience with the mood disorder after giving birth to her second child, Moses, in 2006.
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"Luckily, [my case] was low grade enough that I didn't have to be hospitalized, but it's a very debilitating thing, and I think there's so much shame around it and there shouldn't be," she told ET. "It's something that happens, it's something that befalls many women after they have a baby, and for me, it ended up being a wonderful opportunity to explore some underlying issues that I think the depression kind of brought out."
"So I try to wrap [my head around] the whole thing, and even at the time, it was very difficult to go through, that it was happening," she continued. "It was in my life for a reason and I tried to use that opportunity to try to really get in there and heal some stuff."
The 43-year-old actress has two kids, Apple, 11, and Moses, 9, with her ex-husband, Chris Martin. Paltrow has been very open about her struggle, frequently writing about her experience on her lifestyle website, GOOP.
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"When my son, Moses, came into the world in 2006, I expected to have another period of euphoria following his birth, much the way I had when my daughter [Apple] was born two years earlier," she wrote on her site. "Instead I was confronted with one of the darkest and most painfully debilitating chapters of my life."
Paltrow isn't the only one who has suffered from this disorder. According to psychologist Dr. Karen Binder-Brynes' article on Paltrow's site, one in eight women suffer from mood disturbances after their delivery. Just this week, Nashville star Hayden Panettiere checked into treatment for postpartum depression.
"Hayden Panettiere is voluntarily seeking professional help at a treatment center as she is currently battling postpartum depression," the actress' rep confirmed to ET on Tuesday. "She asks that the media respect her privacy during this time."
Panettiere gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Kaya, with her fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, in December 2014. Last month, the 26-year-old actress spoke up about the struggle many mothers face on Live! with Kelly and Michael.
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"There's a lot of misunderstanding — there's a lot of people out there that think that it's not real, that it's not true, that it's something that's made up in their minds, that 'Oh, it’s hormones.' They brush it off," she said. "It's something that's completely uncontrollable. It's really painful and it's really scary and women need a lot of support."
For more news on Panettiere's treatment check-in, watch the video below.